PROMOTING MUSIC EDUCATION SINCE 1933
AMEA 2026 Conference will be at UAA on January 8-10. Registration opening soon!
AMEA Conference Choral Headliner
John Wayman
Dr. John Wayman is the Associate Director of Choral Activities, Associate Professor, and Area Coordinator for Music Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. He conducts the University Singers and mentors future choral music educators. Dr. Wayman is in high demand as a conductor, adjudicator, and clinician and has served as a guest conductor and adjudicator for numerous state and regional events.
He has presented clinics at state, national, and international conferences on choral pedagogy for the maturing adolescent voice, practical programming, and rehearsal strategies for choral music educators. His research focuses primarily on the changing male voice and music teacher preparation. Dr. Wayman has presented at state conferences such as Alaska MEA, Georgia MEA, Louisiana MEA, New Mexico MEA, Oklahoma ACDA, Tennessee MEA, and Texas MEA; national organizations including the National Association for Music Education, American Choral Directors Association, Society for Research in Music Education, Society of Music Teacher Educators, and Southwestern American Choral Association; and international venues in Greece, Brazil, England, Uganda, China, and, most recently, Scotland and Ireland.
His publications appear in the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, Journal of Research in Music Education, Teaching Music, Texas Music Educator Research, Missouri Journal of Research in Music Education, Kansas Music Review, Ala Breve: Alabama Music Education Journal, and Georgia Music News. He also serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Music Educators Journal.
In 2019, Dr. Wayman was honored with the Sunrise Rotary Professor of the Year Award for the College of Liberal Arts. Above all, he is passionate about teaching and inspiring all who love to sing.
AMEA Conference
General Music Headliner
Stephen Neely
Stephen Neely, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University Milton and Cynthia Friedman Associate Professor of Music, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Marta Sanchez Dalcroze Training Center. He is a teacher, conductor, theorist, writer, and clinician who lectures and presents workshops around the globe in the fields of design, music, architecture, and pedagogy. He holds the Dalcroze License and is a past President of the Dalcroze Society of America.
He teaches Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Dalcroze Pedagogy for the School of Music, having taught every BFA in Music Performance and Composition at CMU since 1999. He taught Dalcroze Eurhythmics and directed the Opera Workshop at Pittsburgh's High School for the Creative and Performing Arts for 23 years (1994–2018), served as Chorusmaster for Opera Theater of Pittsburgh from 1999–2010, was a featured soloist as the Hangman in Leonardo Balada’s early operas Hangman, Hangman and the world premiere of The Town of Greed for the Naxos label, and was a featured speaker at TEDxCMU 2012.
In addition to his duties in the School of Music, Dr. Neely is Eurhythmics faculty for the Houston Grand Opera Butler Studio Artists, Co-Chair of the International Conference of Dalcroze Studies, and co-founder and co-host of the Virtual Dalcroze Meet-up.
Dr. Neely coined the term Soma Literacy in Soma Literate Design–recentering the interstiality of experience at the Carnegie Mellon School of Design in 2019 and continues his research on the intersections between music, design, the body, esthetics, performance, and experience.
"My research focuses on the physical nature of experience and the reflections of musical gestures in everyday interactions—that is, the ways in which our feeling bodies are necessary components of musical participation and how that understanding presents artful potential in any experience.”
